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On April 22 and 23rd Hugoton Public Schools of south-western Kansas sponsored an in-school assembly called “Dinsosaur Lyceum.” Designed for middle and high school students, the hour long assembly offered a detailed introduction to Paleontology and Earth Science complete with a mobile museum containing dinosaur skeletons, fossils and other pertinent replicas. On the surface the concept is excellent especially when you consider that rural Hugoton is a 3 hour drive from the nearest natural history museum.

However, there is one big problem. The program was developed and hosted by The Creation Truth Foundation (CTF), an organization whose purpose is to help bring about “a return to all of realities of Biblical Creation” through education. According to its mission statement, the non-profit’s goal is to combat what founder Dr. Thomas Sharp repeatedly labels a growing “paganistic” lifestyle in America. “The West has become Pagan,” he warns, using the term pagan as a synonym for secular. Together with his colleagues, Dr. Sharp has produced “a host of support materials and services to aid your delivery of a sound science curriculum based in Biblical Creation.”

Based on the review of the website of the Creation Truth Foundation, the ACLU is concerned that these mandatory school assemblies will spread creationism to the Hugoton Public Schools in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Unites States Constitution…

We respectfully request that the District take immediate and concrete steps to remedy these problems. The first step would be to cancel the planned mandatory school assemblies now set for next week.

Despite the ACLU’s strongly worded request, the Board did not cancel the assemblies. CTF arrived in Hugoton that weekend, made some local Church appearances and set up its mobile museum. On Monday and Tuesday, CTF ran the school assemblies in the morning, and then in the evening opened the auditorium up for public presentations.

Superintendent Mark CrawfordHugoton Public Schools

It appears that Superintendant Crawford was undaunted by the ACLU’s threat. In fact, he fired back telling the Topeka-Capital Journal that, “he had a duty to show his students ‘how to handle a bully.” He also corrected the ACLU saying that the events were not mandatory but not one student or faculty opted out.

Despite his confidence, Crawford refused to allow any non-school personnel into the school day assemblies to verify his account. As a result, the ACLU remains unconvinced. Bonney stated, “The opportunity for a constitutional violation is too high because their whole evangelical reason for being is to promote Biblical creationism.” Now, the ACLU is requesting all communication, documents and CTF materials in order to assess the legality of the situation. Did the school system violate the Constitution? The ACLU wrote:

Even if Miles never overtly mentions the Bible or creationism…public schools are not permitted to present students with false information, which the legitimate scientific community has universally rejected, as part of an anti-evolution, pro-creationist effort.

Matt MilesCreation Truth Foundation

Can a Christian missionary – a passionate believer in and teacher of creationism – lecture public school students on dinosaurs without crossing the line? Yes, it is possible for someone to keep from spewing religious rhetoric in inappropriate situations. I can talk about herbs, for example, without discussing their magickal properties. However, it is not my personal mission, nor the mission of my employers to teach about herbs. So the question remains: did Matt Miles, a man whose life and career are focused on the promotion of creationism, censor himself?

To date, Hugoton’s Superintendent has done an impeccable job of holding his position with the public. However, he did make one statement that feeds the cynically-minded. Of the school assemblies, Crawford remarked, “… parents and citizens here in this community want their children to also be curious about other viewpoints of creation and origin.” Did the assembly mention these other viewpoints?

Hugoton is a small close-knit rural town. After scanning online comments from locals, I do believe that Crawford has strong community support. CTF Pastor Matt Miles himself was in fact a resident of the city at one time. However, whether or not Hugoton citizens believe in creationism is not the point. The teaching of any Biblical-based concepts violates the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. While CTF is perfectly within its right to share its material, its fantastic mobile museum, and its beliefs within the private sector, the organization cannot do so in the public schools.

Fortunately for Kansas and similar states who have been struggling with this issue for decades, America’s public education curriculum is undergoing a national change. Over the last few years, an organization made up of educators and administrators has created something called the “Common Core Standards. (CCS).” The goal is to strengthen American education by developing consistency across the country in the basic disciplines of language and math. Its popularity has led to several independent organizations creating additional “tack on” programs for science, art and world languages. Individual states can elect to adopt the programs. To date, Kansas is one of the 45 states* that has indeed adopted the CCC as well as the science program, which, incidentally, teaches evolution and not intelligent design.

I’m personally undecided as to the overall merits of the CCS from an educational standpoint. However, such a program does shift the center of accountability. As such, the new national standards may help to curtail the attempts of these radicals to push religion into the public schools under the pretense of science. CCS won’t stop the extra-curricular activities like the Creation Truth Foundations assemblies. But it may make it easier for a wolf to be called a wolf no matter what clothes he is wearing.

lt is important for Pagan parents or anyone who supports religious equality in the schools to remain vigilant and to be aware of these smaller religious freedom cases. I will be watching as the Hugoton situation plays out.

*The five states that have not adopted the CCS are Texas, Alaska, Minnesota, Virginia, and Nebraska.

“The pagans, by which I refer to pre-Christian Western man, may have been unwilling to accept that strange doctrine of the Son of Man, but they willingly accepted that they were sons of men. They may not have known how to be Christian, but they knew how to be human. The post-Christian, having left Christ, is in the busy process of altogether leaving Man. With respect to those delivering our daily mail, one might say we are moving increasingly to the Age of the Post-Man.”

“The Pagan world awaited Christ as a virgin awaits her bridegroom. In her myth and legend she whispered of Christ. The post-Christian world leaves Christ as an adulteress. In her timidity and weariness she slanders His name. They are both without the fullness of Truth, but oh, how much happier the Pagans must have been.”

The problem with evolutionary religious theory is that it’s poetic nonsense, a selective reading of history and religion to suit a triumphalist idea. It came of an age where many people, still grappling with Darwin’s theory of evolution, started applying it to just about everything. This was not only wrong, but fed into the idea that Caucasian European Christians were the pinnacle of human achievement, a destructive idea that still will not die (ironically, the misapplication of evolutionary theory on folk songs and customs helped jump-start modern Paganism, but that’s another story). Without going too far into it, it’s easy to see how many horrors and “sins” of the modern world actually began with the idea that there was one true way, and that all other ways were not fit for survival, respect, or preservation.

The truth is that polytheism, and other non-monotheistic belief systems, never went anywhere. They have survived just fine to the present day, though often victims of brutal repression and discrimination (and then accused of being “primitive” despite weathering these storms). The myth of a Christian end-point used by countless apologists of colonizers hell-bent on eliminating non-Christian religions in the “New World,” Asia, and Africa (the indigenous religions of Europe thought long dead). These surviving non-Christian religions aren’t “evolving” into Christianity, and the dominant monotheisms are still exerting massive political and cultural power to wipe them out.

“Expressed repeatedly – with the relentlessness of deliberate, moralizing indoctrination – “300” idolizes the same arrogant contempt for citizenship that eventually ruined classical Greece and Republican Rome, and that might bring the same fate to America.”

Yes, the ancient world had bad-asses living in it, warriors who performed amazing feats of bravery, but it was also full of humanitarians, early scientists and doctors, thinkers, and simple folk who only wanted to live the best life possible. Barnes’ mocks the “Americanized silliness that seems to be under the impression that Paganism largely comprised of the eating of the proper roots at the proper times and idolizing liberal politicians..” without realizing that Ancient Rome was full of “liberal” politicians who helped build things like democracy and representative government (not to mention the “social safety net”). For every romantic superhero like Mark Antony, there was a Cicero, working hard to make sure the early forms of our government worked. Those men were often killed to make way for tyranny, but they also made our modern world possible.

The ancient world is far more diverse, complex, strange, and wonderful than anyone can truly imagine, but it was still human in the same way we today are human. Despite the assertions of the “Bad Catholic,” we have not lost that humanity, nor are we so far from the minds who shaped the world we live in today.

“Republican Gov. Bill Haslam allowed the controversial measure to become law without his signature and, in a statement, expressed misgivings about it. Nevertheless, he ignored pleas from educators, parents and civil libertarians to veto the bill. The law does not require the teaching of alternatives to scientific theories of evolution, climate change and “the chemical origins of life.” Instead, it aims to prevent school administrators from reining in teachers who expound on alternative hypotheses to those topics. The measure’s primary sponsor, Republican state Sen. Bo Watson, said it was meant to give teachers the clarity and security to discuss alternative ideas to evolution and climate change that students may have picked up at home and want to explore in class.”

“The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues.” […] The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies. Toward this end, teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.

As I said when I initially wrote about this proposed law, it’s doubly bad for followers of Pagan, indigenous, and earth-centered religions. It could very well insert explicitly Christian notions of creation and the origins of life into science classes, exposing non-Christian children to misinformation on the government’s dime, in addition to undermining basic knowledge of increasingly dire issues like global warming. I can only imagine that legal challenges are being prepared as we speak, I’ll keep you updated on this story as it progresses.

Solar Cross Temple’s publishing imprint Sunna Press has announced the release of “Crafting a Daily Practice” by author, teacher, and mystic, T. Thorn Coyle. The new book “walks the reader through a simple eightweek course exploring various methods for engaging in spiritual practice.” Yesterday, the book shot to #1 in three Amazon categories: Alternative Medicine (today it’s #3), Meditation (today it’s #2), and Paganism (still #1!). Congratulations to Thorn, Solar Cross, and Sunna Press on the successful launch!

Ian Astbury is not only lead singer of the rock band The Cult, he’s also a Buddhist. In addition to being a Buddhist, he may also be the incarnation of a protector deity. Quote: “One night [my guide] said to me, “You are the incarnation of a protector deity.” I said, “So, not an enlightened lama or monk?” And he said, “No, no; just a protector deity. You have to guard the Dharma, to hold the space.” I’m thinking, “Oh, shit, more of a Bodhisattva gig. You mean I have to give up my seat on the bus?” Yep. [Laughs.] That was such a drag to find that out! But it was also a reminder that there’s work to be done, and not to get caught up in the ego of it. Okay, so I’m being of service.” (It’s OK if you’ve been singing “Fire Woman” in your head while reading this.)

“The teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy . . . The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies.”

This bill, poised to be a law, is doubly bad for followers of Pagan, indigenous, and earth-centered religions. It not only seeks to insert explicitly Christian notions of creation and the origins of life into science classes, exposing non-Christian children to misinformation on the government’s dime, but it also seeks to undermine basic knowledge of increasingly dire issues like global warming. If signed, the law would open the door to hucksters who believe environmentalism is a “green dragon” that promotes Pagan religion (though a lot of opposition to climate change science is far more cynical). This is just another aspect of us being caught in another faith’s crisis, watching largely powerless as Christianity wars with itself over how to approach the origins of life or climate science.

I think that since Bush has taken this brave step, all reasonable theories should be heard in public schools! Having said that, I demand that the TRUE answer to the beginning of all things be taught in schools. Because everyone knows that Danu the divine waters of heaven fell to the lifeless rock we now call earth and from her all life sprang including the first sacred oak who when conjoined with the sacred waters dropped two acorns that grew to become Dagda “The Good God” and Brigid “The Exalted One” who brought order to the land and built the first cities.

Oh and in fairness to our Asatru brothers and sisters we will also teach that the great cow Audumla licked away the ice to reveal the first gods who slayed the giant Ymir and created the earth, mountains, oceans, sky and trees from his dead body.

Finally, we should also teach the Faery creation story as recounted in Starhawk’s “The Spiral Dance” in which The Goddess apon seeing her own reflection created a companion from this reflection and made love to her which created a song from which all things sprung. This reflection then seperated from The Goddess eventually becomes masculine and the first God.

This of course is just the beginning! I have a more “scientific” version called “Polytheistic Design” that posits multiple intelligent designers, and “Matrifocal Design” which will settle the question of exactly what the gender of this intelligent designer was. Thanks again President Bush!

But as the poet Morrissey said, “the joke isn’t funny anymore.” While scoring a rhetorical point or two once might have been a fun idea, we now stare down inaction at rapid climate and weather changes, and are forced to re-fight battles waged at the beginning of the 20th century (also in Tennessee). For those of us who see the planet itself as sacred, we commit a blasphemy every day we waste re-litigating the Enlightenment. If Christians want religion in schools, it should be in a comparative religion class, a place I would happily endorse “teaching the controversy” by demanding the inclusion of Pagan faiths. It seems clear that once given enough power, conservative Christians work tirelessly to roll back our secular, pluralistic, advances, endangering all that minority faiths have worked for. Teaching the controversy is all about teaching Christianity, all you have to do is ask for the name of the Intelligent Designer to be sure.